


Pay No Attention (To The Man Behind The Iron Curtain)

by diadema



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Inspired by GIFs, Missing Scene, Mutual Pining, One Shot, Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 20:33:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16709551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diadema/pseuds/diadema
Summary: At a boutique in West Germany, Gaby discovers a different side to her 'fiance'.A gift fic for guest user Paloma. <3





	Pay No Attention (To The Man Behind The Iron Curtain)

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans both at home and abroad! And to the fandom at large, THANK YOU all for the love and support. I am so grateful for all of you. <3
> 
> This fic was inspired by [a behind-the-scenes gif](https://circusgifs.tumblr.com/post/138748159688) that is TOO PRECIOUS for words. I am gifting it to Paloma who has been such a kind, encouraging presence across so many stories. She's a gem! (Also, Paloma, if you do get an AO3 account, please let me know so I can properly gift it to you!)
> 
> Love and thanks, as always, to Somedeepmystery, SydneyMo, and the rest of my fic family. I treasure your input and cherish your friendship more than I can say. Thank you for everything.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading. Comments always appreciated!

It is something far less idle than curiosity that drives her to do it.

It is superstition, a macabre fantasy borne of childhood nightmares and years spent in the shadow of the hammer and sickle. It is need, anxious need, reckless and burning and primal that spurs her onwards. And Gaby Teller would be lying if she said it _weren’t_ a bit of fascination as well.

Interest, perhaps, or intrigue.

They are on opposite sides of the curtain—not an Iron one, this time, but silk. She has traded unspeakable oppression for unapologetic indulgence, and now, standing in a dressing room at a boutique in West Germany, Gaby _has_ to know what type of monster is waiting out front for her. Did the KGB agent step out of a fairy tale fully-formed, she wonders, or is he a devil of his own invention? She sees a machine more than she does a man, a Soviet automaton who snaps to attention when prompted. But she has a sneaking suspicion that there is more to him than meets the eye.

They’ve already fallen in lockstep into their routine. Gaby stomps down the makeshift runway and submits herself to his inspection. A perfunctory twirl, a low, rolling commentary, and then she is dismissed to try on the next. Her resentment of this arrangement is obvious. The dark thrill that shivers beneath it, however, is not.

And yet, Gaby can’t shake the sense that the man somehow _knows._ That he reads it in her anyway, and that, with every sweep of his eyes or his large, cool hands, he is reflecting it right back to her. She doubts he understands it anymore than she does, doubts he even recognizes it in _himself_ —though she can’t, won’t take any comfort in it.

And so she stalks back to the dressing room and wonders just what the KGB agent does while he waits for her. He has long ago exhausted the boutique’s selection, the attendants’ strained attempts at small talk. Exhausted _her_ with his looming presence and intently careful scrutiny.

Gaby takes her time undressing as she considers this. She lets her thoughts crescendo with suspense and that dangerous desire to _catch him_ somehow. To see with her own eyes what he does when there’s no part to play. Whether the Russian has any tics or means to occupy himself… if he’d want to do so, or if he even _could._ For all Gaby knows, the man is simply standing there, an idling machine, waiting to be activated. She stifles a shudder at the thought.

The Dior shimmers around her ankles in a pool of white-silver, all clean-cut, understated elegance. She hardly spares it a second glance as she steps out of it. With a sigh, she crosses the room to grab the next garment, stilling when the clicking of her high heels seems to echo in her ears. Distinct and deafening. A dead giveaway of her movements.

_That won’t do._

Gaby curses low in her throat when her shoe gets tangled in a pile of canary yellow—the latest casualty of this sartorial battlefield.  She shakes her foot to dislodge it, kicking out with more force than strictly necessary.

Her nerves are already stretched thin, fraying at the edges, and the dull thud that greets her ears as first one, then the other white leather pump ricochets off the wall is a gasping breath of catharsis. A soft, disapproving _tsk_ sounds from somewhere in the boutique, and Gaby rolls her eyes in annoyance. _What did it matter?_ She wants to snap at him. They were buying that pair anyway.

She pictures him shaking his head: a scowl softening to a wince, too detached to be fond but perhaps with a flicker of amusement there as well. Gaby releases her breath slowly as she waits. Waits until her pulse begins to even out. Until she’s _certain_ that the KGB agent has shifted back into neutral… and then waits a moment more.

She slips the last dress over her head: green and white and her favorite of his selections—if she were to even allow herself such a luxury. Gaby will wear what she is told, go where she is sent, and go _with_ the man they told her to. Her own preferences have nothing to do with the outcome, but (grudgingly) she will concede that her wardrobe could be worse.

She smooths down the hem, nods at her reflection, and pads silently to the curtain. She hooks a finger in the fabric, inches it back with painstaking caution… just enough to peek out without drawing any attention.

What she sees makes her automaton theory pale in comparison, though surely, the image before her now is no less fantastic.

The man is sitting off to the side, not in a chair but perched on one of the counters—a slab of marble somehow tall enough and _deep_ enough that his long legs are well-above the ground. His hands cup the ledge on either side of him, head bowed, feet swinging absentmindedly, the point of one shoe tilting up and down in an alternating rhythm.

It is incongruously childlike, almost endearingly so. _Almost,_ she stresses. She gawks at him, a strangled, near-hysterical huff of laughter bubbling up in her chest. _This_ is the same man who ripped the back off her car?

The Russian’s head snaps up immediately, eyes going comically wide as he catches sight of her. A slight flush creeps up his neck, darkening over his ears. He is on his feet before she’s even fully stepped out of hiding.

“You look… you look lovely,” he says. It is the first compliment he’s paid her, and try as she might, Gaby can’t find the lie in it or even a hint of platitude. His sincerity gives her pause, but she recovers quickly. Only the slightest stutter in her steps could compromise her as she approaches him.

The mechanic tips her head at him in acknowledgement, gaze flicking curiously to the fingers tapping idly against his thigh. He clasps his hands tightly behind his back when he notices, and she tucks it away for future reference.

Gaby lifts her eyes to meet his and lets her own hands flutter dramatically to her sides. “This is the last one,” she announces. “Are we done?”

The man looks at her, _really_ looks at her then—stepping out of his role of fashion designer and cautiously adopting the part of fiance. His features soften slightly, his bearing loses some of the smug knowingness of a man in his element. Uncharted waters, it seems. For the both of them.

Gaby tilts her chin up, aiming for defiant but settling for guarded instead. He nods. _“Da._ You may dress in your own clothes now, if you wish.”

There’s no condescension in his voice, no sneer or dismissal, and that is perhaps what saves him. The scathing retort cools on her tongue, falls from her lips as a noncommittal _hmph_ as she turns away. Three steps in, and a sudden impulse overtakes her.

Gaby calls back to the Russian over her shoulder. A grim, almost petty satisfaction thrums through her when she sees his eyes skim self-consciously down the exposed line of her back before snapping guiltily back to her face.

“There’s a chair right there, you know.”

She smirks at the roll of those blue eyes and sashays back towards the dressing room. He stops her shortly after with a single word.

“Wait.”

Gaby turns back to face him. Her heart is pounding, but she masks it behind an arch look.  The man gestures to her still bare feet. “Your shoes,” he explains. “You will need to try them on.”

“I’ve already—”

“No. Not that pair. Those belong with the Dior.” She sees the hesitation flicker across his features then, the slight frown pulling at his brows. “Unless they are uncomfortable? We could find a diff—”

“They’re fine,” she assures him. It’s oddly subduing, his concern. That he would be mindful of such things and then _want_ to fix it for her… and there was the small matter, too, of how he had said it. _We._ As if he saw her as a partner rather than an asset.

The Russian nods, beckons for her to return. “Come,” he says, more invitation than command. “I have just the right pair in mind.”

Her lips quirk into a small smile as she ignores his outstretched hand. She plants her palm on his shoulder instead and pushes down, using him for leverage as she leaps off the dais. His hands hover automatically by her waist to steady her, but Gaby lands lightly on her feet without his help. She shrugs when he blinks at her in surprise.

She makes her way to the sitting area on the side. Out of the corner of her eye, Gaby can see him signalling to one of the attendants and feels, rather than hears him approach. How a man that large can move so silently… it defies explanation.

“Would you like to take a seat?” he asks, indicating the zebra-print chair, the one he himself had neglected. He scoffs when he follows her gaze to the pink countertop beside it. A flat look, an even flatter intonation. “Or should I get a stepstool?”

There’s a hint of a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth, and it makes her blood go warm. Gaby glares at him. She sets her hands on either side of the marble behind her and nimbly hops up, never once breaking eye contact. She raises an eyebrow at him: a silent challenge.

“Impressive.”

The boutique clerk arrives then with the shoes, and he thanks her, holding them up for Gaby’s approval. White and silver with a chunky heel and a thin strap above the ankles. She nods and lets her eyes slide away, more for the sudden proximity than any feigned boredom.

At this height, her face is level with his neck. Her gaze darts from the slight stubble on his jaw to the column of his throat, down to where it disappears into the high collar of his shirt. She has _finally_ settled on a point just over his shoulder when she jolts.

His touch is cooler than the stone beneath her, hands large enough to engulf her entire foot. Gaby opens her mouth in protest as he guides the shoe on, carefully tightening the strap at her ankle. He tilts his gaze up, questioningly, when she hisses at the next moment of contact.

“Your hands are cold.”

He rumbles an apology as he adjusts the other strap, before taking a step back to admire the effect. “Perfect fit,” he proclaims. “Just like your _Aschenputtel."_

Gaby barely conceals her flinch for it. The man’s brow furrows, and he shifts towards her, a figure plucked from the wrong fairy tale. “Only they’re not gold.” A biting edge creeps into her voice. “And they _don’t_ make me your woman.”

The Russian stares at her for a fraction of a second too long. “No,” he concedes. “They do not.”

She tips her head—a tiny, cautious nod—and then he is speaking again. “But for your uncle’s sake, perhaps you could _try_ to pretend that we are very happy together?”

“I can see you as the prince.”

His expression is carefully guarded, as if he _knows_ what’s coming but surrenders to it anyway, baring his neck to her for his own execution. “You can?”

“If I ran away from you, I can see you tearing the entire kingdom apart until you found me.”

Her words hang heavy in the air, a verbal slap: a sharp sting, a lingering heat. But the man doesn’t look angry as she expects, nor does he freeze over. Instead, he sighs. “Maybe to keep track of you,” he says, “but like the Cowboy said… you are star of this show.”

_I’m not going back behind that Wall._

_You don’t have to go_ anywhere _that you don’t want to go._

Gaby has enough composure not to gape at him, but she knows her mask has been knocked out of place, and that, for a brief, terrifying moment, he can see beneath it. She knows it in the way he smiles at her, small but _real,_ and with a warmth in his eyes she’s never seen before.

Her mechanic’s hands are itching to pull him apart, to map out his circuitry and search for his wiring, for any _trace_ of programming. For whatever it is that is making him look at her the way he does now. It would be all too easy, she thinks, to curl her fingers in his shirt and tug him close, to breathe him in and feel his pulse jump beneath her—

“You should go get changed,” he says quietly. He clears his throat as he steps back, though his voice is still rough. “I will take care of the rest.”

Gaby accepts the hand he offers her this time. He helps her down, thumb brushing over her engagement ring as he gently releases her. She watches him leave, the way his fingers flex suddenly at his side. An unspeakable _something_ echoes in her own body in response.

“Illya,” she calls.

It is the first time she has used his name. Even from the back, Gaby can see the effect it has on him. He stops cold, the military set of his posture eases. His shoulders drop, and she wonders if it is _relief_ that she reads in him.

He turns around and, for a second, his expression is startlingly open. She blinks, trying to recover from the shock of it. “Thank you.”

The man _—Illya,_ she reminds herself—opens his mouth to reply before thinking better of it. He _tsks_ again, offers her a nod and a tight smile before returning to his task.

Gaby stares after him, a curious swooping low in her stomach. She idly twists the ring on her finger as she considers it: the possibility that her fairy tale monster may himself have been cursed… and whose spell he may be under now.

And what of her? Gaby is no innocent in this. She is not the virtuous heroine whose pure heart and peerless kindness triumphs over evil in the end.  There is no happily ever after, no dovetailed resolutions. Not for people like her. Not for people like _him._

But, as she sets her sights on the mission ahead, she wonders if she can pretend—for her uncle's sake and maybe even her own—that the two of them really can be 'very happy' together.

After all, the fate of the world is depending on it.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I kept this part of my author note until the end... 
> 
> I know I've mentioned on a few fics about needing to cut back my fandom involvement a bit for the sake of my mental health and general well-being... and then, inevitably, have appeared within a week with a new update (and, you know, just pretty much living on this site anyway). What can I say? I love this fandom! But, in all honesty and in all seriousness, Real Life has largely forced the issue out of my hands this time. I hope to make it to the Christmas exchange and have a fic ready to go, but after that...? I really don't know. I may or may not be as active during this period of 'creative hibernation' and recovery. 
> 
> This extends to commenting on other fics as well, which is where I'd like to ask your help. As I said above, I basically live on AO3, so I'm guessing you've seen my name all over the comment threads. I try my best to support as many writers as I can and it's SO VERY IMPORTANT to me that I do so. But I'm stretched dangerously thin at the moment and am RIDICULOUSLY stressed about what happens to our fandom if I step back from any/all of my main 'roles'. A lot of it is self-imposed, I know, but it's so hard to not feel like Atlas at times.
> 
> So, please, please, PLEASE... help me keep the good vibes going. Welcome the new writers and welcome back the returning ones. Read the wips and the finished works and celebrate all the time and energy and CARE that went into creating them. Revisit old fics!!! Spread the love that I may not be able to and, above all, take good care of yourselves and each other.
> 
> I love you all and am so thankful for you.


End file.
